Below you will find a list of questions and answers which should help describe what the Moriah Collection is all about, how businesses will be selected for inclusion, etc. This list is nowhere near complete so we'll be updating it over the weeks to come. If you'd like to be notified when updates are released, please join our mailing list.

FAQs

Because it’s time for something new. We’ve been marketing small lodging properties and all their profit centers (restaurants, spas, etc.) for 25 years now. We’ve watched the internet grow from a few small search engines and lodging directories into a giant offering of lodging guides and various sites you needed to join. However, many of them have been too cumbersome to track and too expensive to achieve real revenue results. Over the last few years we’ve watched as the internet has consolidated and most directories have become irrelevant. Prime marketing resources have been swallowed up by mammoth corporations and associations have floundered. Quite simply, if we don’t do something now, the OTA’s (online travel agencies) will own the entire market (including the distribution channel) and inns will suffer.

The OTA’s are great at selling a generic product like hotel rooms or a low-end vacation rentals to a Walmart audience. They’re big, ungainly corporations who serve a board and their investors instead of the properties who list with them and the public who utilizes them. We have very specific and strategic plans on how to compete with and win against the OTA’s but this will remain a secret until we have released our product.

Absolutely. Can you name one that is increasing in effectiveness year over year and being run really well by people who completely understand our industry and how to aggressively market inns? We can’t and knowing who’s great is exactly our business. The truth of the matter is that all such guides are in a downward spiral and often times the reasons are very simple – either they don’t know what they’re doing or they’ve lost their fire.

In a word, no and here’s why. Too many guides try to keep their prices low and their number of properties high and then hope their members don't notice the low ROI (Return on Investment). It's a numbers game and they make their money on volume. The very concept of ROI is that the greater an investment, which is wisely spent, the greater the return. Our goal will be to provide a high return for our members and in order to do this a proper amount must be invested.

Here's a case in point: A few years back a small state decided to create a B&B association. When they told us about their plans, I asked if they’d already set their annual rates and they assured me they had set the rates so low that anyone could afford to join. I shook my head as now they had no money for marketing. So, they created a guide for the traveling public but because they didn’t charge enough, they couldn’t properly promote it to the potential guests. This is like only saving enough money to buy a car but having no money to put gas in the tank – it’s crazy. The better question is will our guide provide a better value than our competitors and that answer is a resounding “Yes!” Unlike other guides, The Moriah Collection will utilize an aggressive marketing strategy and large advertising budgets in order to compete with the OTA’s.

It will be unique for each property based on a wide variety of factors including their size, potential revenue the property will receive from our guide, how much their marketing resource budget will need to be, etc. We will be focusing on a high and verifiable ROI for our members and our prices will be appropriate for each individual property.

You don’t. This is a curated list – we select the places we want included and send them an invitation to apply. If you’d like to be considered for inclusion, join the mailing list and we’ll send out more information in the near future.

People who love to travel, love quality, love unique experiences, love adventure and the list goes on. There’s a growing segment of the population looking for a curated list of great places they can’t wait to experience and we plan to give it to them.

Membership in other marketing organizations which are represented as a brand will not be allowed as The Moriah Collection will technically be a soft-brand. Properties will be allowed to serve out their annual memberships with other organizations however.

No because that would be a disservice to the traveling public. By its very nature the guide will be a small collection of great places (as opposed to an exhaustive directory). If we find some place we love, we’re going to invite them to be a member of the collection.

We are excited about the logo which is a Chinese character representing togetherness, a collection, and harmony, etc. By strange coincidence the character resembles a house (or inn, restaurant, spa, etc.). We feel it is a perfect logo to reflect our intent and represent our new collection. The color gold in Chinese tradition means many things and is frequently believed to bring prosperity. Together we believe the logo and gold coloring represents Prosperity for our Collection of members.

If you look at company logos they rarely mean anything important. Whether they're a house, quill pen, owl, plane in flight, etc. — they're all simply images. We wanted a logo that actually meant something and we found a Chinese character that amazingly looked like a house or inn and which also represented what we're all about. To flip the question around, does joining an organization which uses a Fleur-de-lis mean you're trying to target the French population and what does the Fleur-de-lis have to do with lodging?

State associations, PAII and AIHP are all potential (and likely) partners. Only organizations which soft-brand their members and/or have their own exclusivity policies will cause issues. Basically, if there's a brass plaque on the outside of the property -- it's probably been branded much the way Hilton and Hyatt are.

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